Social media platform Twitter suspended the official English account of the Ezzeldin al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement - without prior notice, the Palestinian daily news website Safa reported on Saturday.

Twitter closed the group's official account on Thursday following pressure from Zionist groups and Christians, the supervisor of the military wing‘s Twitter page said in a statement released on the group‘s online website.

The closure came after the group‘s success in portraying a positive image of the Palestinian resistance to a Western audience, he added.

The page supervisor also described Twitter’s policy as “unprofessional,” blaming the social networking platform for giving more space to the Israeli army “despite the terrorism practiced by the [Israeli] occupation against the Palestinian people from siege and killing.”

The group subsequently launched a new page on Twitter called @qassambrigade.

Hamas is blacklisted as a terror group by both the European Union and the United States, despite winning Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006.